Estimates of soil carbon concentration in tropical and temperate forest and woodland from available GIS data on three continents

Estimates of soil carbon concentration in tropical and temperate forest and woodland from available GIS data on three continents

Concern about climate change, with the subsequent emergence of carbon markets and policy initiatives such as REDD (reducing carbon emissions by decreasing deforestation and forest degradation), have focused attention on assessing and monitoring terrestrial carbon reserves. Most effort has focused on above-ground forest biomass. Soil has received less attention despite containing more carbon than above-ground terrestrial biomass and the atmosphere combined. Our aim was to explore how well soil carbon concentration could be estimated on three continents from existing climate, topography and vegetation-cover data.